{"id":1160,"date":"2012-03-21T12:12:27","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T12:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/?p=1160"},"modified":"2015-03-26T07:13:00","modified_gmt":"2015-03-26T07:13:00","slug":"ocd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/ocd\/","title":{"rendered":"OCD"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Morgan Sagdahl<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Now I lay me down to sleep. Now I lay me. Now I. Now I can finally go to sleep after screaming angel prayers in my head four times to keep bad spirits away. Mommy said it was because I had OCD. But I told her I wanted CDO so the letters were in alphabetical order like they should be. I googled it just to be sure. And at the age of eight, I chose not to identify with the people I\u2019d heard of with this condition. I didn\u2019t repeatedly wash my hands or make sure my room was neat. I just made lists a lot. They were stapled to the walls in my bedroom to remind me who my friends were in what order or what I wanted, by category and price, for Christmas or what I did on May 17th<\/sup>, 2006 all the way from brushing my teeth to spitting out my winterfresh gum into the garbage can by the teacher\u2019s desk in Mr. McNeil\u2019s science class at 9:32am. I found comfort in this organization as well as the oral fixations such as sucking on a pacifier until I was fourteen like a rave girl or biting my nails. I think this is because I was breastfed until age four.<\/p>\n

Obsessive. People usually begin to abuse the word usage of this disorder beginning with the word obsessive. Obsessive isn\u2019t making your bed after you wake up or using hand sanitizer when it\u2019s convenient for you. Obsessive is when people start to call you crazy, when you start to believe them. Check my bedroom. Against the walls lined up with their labels clearly displayed are sixteen water bottles filled with the shells of sunflower seeds that I chewed two summers ago. Under my bed, in filing boxes is all the coursework and in-class assignments I\u2019ve ever done in my entire lifetime. In that cubby over in the corner you\u2019ll find hats I\u2019ve never worn and the posters I had in the room I once shared with my sister that\u2019ll never find their ways to the walls again. I don\u2019t know why I have to keep this stuff, but I remember we had matching sheets. It won\u2019t be long before you learn why I don\u2019t invite people over. And if you think that\u2019s a mess, you can\u2019t imagine the atrocity going on in my head. I can\u2019t help but think I have too much control. If I think bad thoughts, bad thoughts come true. I\u2019ve sat idle and cried for hours fearing that something is going to happen because I accidentally thought of it. You don\u2019t know what it\u2019s like to be so afraid of molesting a child or killing a family member without any desire to do so. To believe that I\u2019ve got some illness or disease that no one\u2019s ever heard of let alone knows how to diagnose and then I\u2019m sure I\u2019m going to die soon. Horrible tragic images crawl into my mindset and I haven\u2019t mastered a cleansing technique yet. So I keep my things in multiples of four to counterbalance the effects of my impurities.<\/p>\n

Compulsive. This is the part that gets skipped over in people\u2019s mind. Compulsive means you can\u2019t control it. You don\u2019t think to control it. It just happens. I spend my time at home sitting in a rocking chair, pushing myself back and forth until my legs fall asleep. I\u2019ve come the conclusion that I\u2019ll never be able to live in a house without a rocking chair. In my house, we have four. But that satisfaction isn\u2019t enough to keep me from picking at my physical imperfections. I have scars on my arms from trying to remove asymmetrical freckles. And I\u2019ve been zapped with lasers to fix the ones on my face. Certain habits digest me alive. On numerous accounts, I\u2019ve mourned tragedy at the top of the stairs after realizing I forgot to skip every fourth one. I\u2019ll go barefoot if I can\u2019t find matching socks. Check my texts. It takes more than average strength to put only one exclamation point at the end of that sentence. I wish I was exaggerating.<\/p>\n

Disorder. I try so hard to hide this entirety in public. But when one contact falls out, I must take the other one out even if it leaves me blind. It pushes me beyond thinking logically or conveniently. I cut pizza slices in half so four will only really be two, and I won\u2019t get sick after eating. I count my m&ms and my oreos and the slices of turkey on the sandwich I made for lunch this morning. It\u2019s incredible how people never notice me sorting them, but I guess I\u2019m just sneaky and they\u2019re too na\u00efve to remember to push in their chairs before they leave so I\u2019m always the last one out of class. Check my math homework. It\u2019s on graph paper and each letter has its own box otherwise my day is ruined. I\u2019m paranoid constantly. I won\u2019t even step on sidewalk cracks. People tell me to walk with my eyes looking forward instead of down, but I don\u2019t play around with superstition.<\/p>\n

I met a girl one time who kept her purse clean. She claimed to have OCD instead of taking pride in her neatness, she reached out for attention by telling people there was something wrong with her. She had long fingernails. Now between you and me, having long nails doesn\u2019t mean there\u2019s nothing wrong with you\u2026 necessarily. But I am obsessive compulsive. And yes, it is a disorder. It\u2019s a psychiatric anxiety<\/strong> abnormality and I know that nervous people have a tendency to bite their nails down short. In psychology class we learned that there\u2019s no cure and no proven successful treatment. I guess I will never have hands like the pretty girls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Morgan Sagdahl Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Now I lay me down to sleep. Now I lay me. Now I. Now I can finally go to sleep after screaming … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2012-edition","category-previous-editions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1160"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1243,"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions\/1243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentweb.bellevuecollege.edu\/belletrist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}